Toasters and Sno-Cats tell climate stories at Science Museum

The Toaster Project saw designer Thomas Thwaites pull apart a cheap toaster and build his own, mining and processing all of the raw materials himself and making every single component. The resulting toaster has an irregular form and aims to comment on our consumerist society

Daniel Alexander

The Science Museum is to reveal the hidden stories behind some of
its best-loved exhibits, offering a fresh take on historic
inventions and examining their environmental impact.

Ten Climate Stories is part of the museum's three-year
Climate
Changing programme, which aims to provoke thought around
climate science.

Exhibits include the Sno-Cat that Sir Vivian Fuchs used when
crossing the Antarctic with
Sir Edmund Hillary in 1955-8. The bright orange vehicle was one of
four which travelled the treacherous journey.

The Toaster Project saw designer Thomas Thwaites pull
apart a cheap toaster and build his own, mining and processing all
of the raw materials himself and making every single component.

Longplayer, by Jem Finer, is a thousand year long piece
of music that started playing on New Year's Eve 1999.

Other exhibits in Ten Climate Stories include a
million-volt machine used to build an atom bomb, the first
photograph of Earth from space, a painting of a blazing inferno in
18th-century Shropshire, the march of steel pylons across Britain's
countryside and the roots of car culture in First World War
America.